


Hand in Mine, Into Your Icy Blues

by xXChemically_Imbalanced_RomanceXx



Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Child Neglect, Danny Loves Space, Danny is feral, Danny is not a biological Fenton, Found Family, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Not too feral tho, Sibling Love, The fentons aren't the best parents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-03
Updated: 2020-12-03
Packaged: 2021-03-09 17:39:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27850118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xXChemically_Imbalanced_RomanceXx/pseuds/xXChemically_Imbalanced_RomanceXx
Summary: AU where ghost hunting is a respected profession and captured ghosts are used as tools in order to find other ghosts, *insert Danny angst because I love seeing the boy suffer*The Fentons are America's top ghost researchers, famous for their work, infamous for their neglectful habits. Jazz finds their newest research subject down in the lab.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 183





	Hand in Mine, Into Your Icy Blues

It was weird to live with the fact that your parents are “big shots” in their profession when you have to come home to them every day. Especially when you didn’t seem to know your parents at all when all you saw of them were the shadows behind their studies.

Growing up as an only child was, in the nicest way possible, lonely. Which is why Jasmine Fenton found herself raised by the books on her shelf and the curiosity in her heart. Sure, her parents were there at the start, it would be cruel to leave a newborn baby to fend for herself, but the moment she showed signs of independence.

It was fine. Everything she could ever need she could find on her own. She taught herself to cook, to clean, to spell the extra difficult words in her 3rd grade English class, to solve the laborious equations in her honors Pre-Cal class. She earned the food she made, she reveled in the clean citrus smell of her room, she earned the praise from her teachers. And when she found she couldn’t connect to the other students, she just reminded herself that she didn’t need the warm embrace of a mother, the thunderous laugh of a father, nor did she need friends. She could take care of herself.

Which is why she found herself sat in front of the only thing her parents ever shielded her from.

* * *

It was a sad sight to say the least. It seemed like it was more bruises and taunt broken bones, if it even had bones, than skin. She had always been known for her soft heart, always giving others second chances even when they were undeserving. Which is why she found herself in front of the very thing that shouldn’t ever be shown that kind of weakness.

Apart from the obvious signs of abuse, it was all teeth and claws, snarling at her even now. She was sure that if she were to let it out, it wouldn’t hesitate in killing her and her parents.

The growl that erupted from its chest broke her away from her thoughts. The cold basement floor seemed to get colder as she stared into its eyes. There was a flash of something before his gaze was consumed by guarded anger.

“Hey, it’s okay,” the closer she got the more aggressive it seemed to get, “it’s okay, I’m not going to hurt you. Look!”

She opened her palm to reveal a cookie she had snuck down with her. If Pavlov taught her anything, it’s that the favors of any being, be it a dog or undead monstrosity, can be won over through positive stimuli.

“Here see, I’ll have some too! It’s really good, I’m sure you’ll like it!”

At this point in her life, she wasn’t really sure of anything anymore. Life had been so much easier when her parents were just some far to reach superheroes she barely saw. She used to think like them, that ghosts, if you could even call them that, were just balls of left-over emotion from when a person died. That ghosts were some kind of monster in the closet that her parents could just scare away with their presence. That they were less than the dust bunnies under her bed. But there were skeletons in that closet too. Awful, immoral experiments, living dissections, and the screams. She doesn’t hate her parents, far from it, she loves them with all her heart, but the studies they were a part of? The less empathic members in their field? Hunters? Those were fair game to hate.

She split the cookie into two messy halves, popping one in her mouth as she nudged the other closer to the teeth in front of her. The teeth glared back.

“Okay, I get it, I’ll be on my way, but this isn’t the last you’ll see of me.”

With that, she got up, dusted her jeans off, and with her took the only light present in the basement lab.

She didn’t catch the small ‘thank you’ that followed.

* * *

Once in her room, Jazz let the tears slip. Whatever was in her parents’ basement was really pulling at her heartstrings. The thing looked to be no older than 15 years old, it was a child. But looks can be deceiving. She couldn’t begin to count how many of these child ghosts had attempted a massacre, how many of them seemed innocent enough to fool someone out of their own free will. Child or not, whatever was in the basement was dangerous. She was playing with fire here. But the look of hurt in his eyes seemed real; felt real. And, if anything, he seemed more at risk of being hurt by her rather than the other way around. He was as thin as a twig and too exhausted to do much of anything. If she could only-

Jazz shook the thoughts out of her head, plopping herself on her bed. Since when had ‘it’ become a ‘he’? And more importantly, why was there fear in his eyes?

“Jazzy pants, we’re home! We’ll be in the lab if you need us. “We left 20 bucks on the dinner table, go ahead and order some take-out for yourself!”

She sighed as she pushed herself off and out of her room. As she dialed the number to the first restraint that came to mind, she couldn’t help her thoughts wandering to the bag of bones locked in the lab just beneath her feet.

“Hi, thank you for calling Shanghai Inn what can I get started for yah?”

“Yeah, can I get some Vegetable Chow Mein and two Egg Rolls please?”

* * *

By the time her parents had finally stepped out of the lab, the food had long since gone cold. She tiptoed down into the basement and cracked open the door into darkness. There was a green glow and something of a soft hum emanating from something shoved in the corner of the lab. Taking a deep breath, she mustered up the courage to fully plunge into the shadows and crept towards the covered cage. One hand holding a plate of Chinese take-out, she fumbled with her phone until it pierced the darkness.

Almost instantly the hum ceased, again plunging her into a deafening silence.

“Hey, um, I’m back and I brought more goodies!”

There was a sudden sound of rustling before a quiet sniffle was heard. At that, she closed the distance between her and the cage in front of her and she peeled back the sheet over it.

She almost threw up there and then.

It- he was barely holding himself together, literally. He was tightly hugging his bleeding torso. A less perceptive person would’ve pegged it as the remnants of whatever was the creature’s last meal, but Jazz saw the jagged cuts he was trying but failing, to conceal. He’d been vivisected. He’d been vivisected by her own parents.

She dropped to her knees, the meal in her hands forgotten. That seemed to startle him back to reality because he began his growling again. This time a lot more defensive and a lot less forgiving.

“Hey, hey, it’s okay, it’s just me see? It’s just me.” She said as she put her hands up in what she hoped was a universal surrender.

He seemed to study her as his head tilted, growl dissipating. In another life, she would’ve called it cute, adorable even, but right now she was trying her hardest not to scream out of instinctual fear. After he seemed to deem her safe enough to his standards, he went back to picking at his chest, the quiet hum returning to the room.

“I don’t know if you can understand me, like, at all, but I can help you with that,” she pointed to his exposed chest. She hadn’t noticed it when she first walked in, but it seemed to be the source of the soft glow in the room. He was sluggishly bleeding what she guessed was the ectoplasm her parents studied.

Again, he responded with empty eyes and a head tilt.

Were her parents right? Was this an unfeeling killer she was kneeled in front of? Of course they were right, how could she, someone who’s never even thought of looking into ghosts before, compete with the two most respected researchers in the field. Hell, they’ve got to have their PhDs mounted somewhere in this lab. She should’ve known better. She should’ve-

A whine echoed through the lab. She looked up from her lap to find the dead’s eyes locked on her. Once he seemed sure that her attention was on him, he gave a slight nod of his head, gesturing to his shredded torso.

“You want me to help?”

Another nod.

“Okay, alright, that’s good- I mean, not good, but, okay”

She scattered away from the injured boy, mentally making a list of materials she would need to stitch him back up. She would need a first aid kit, naturally, she would also need some kind of suture that would actually hold, the Fenton net might. Her mind was racing, trying to figure out how to do the task at hand. The poor kid wasn’t in any shape to move, so how could she tend to him from outside the cage? Unless-

“Okay, for this to work we’re going to have to trust each other okay?” she paused, was she really going through with this? “I’m going to have to be able to trust that you won’t just randomly decide to kill me and make me your next meal,”

At that, he made an adorably disgusted face. Ancients he was definitely growing on her.

“and you’re going to have to trust me to not cut you open or something, deal?” she pressed her pinkie into the cage. She didn’t know why she did it, it was a childish gesture she grew out of ages ago, she was 18 making a deal for her life for crying out loud, not some child promising friendship, to a dead who probably didn’t even understand the gesture nonetheless.

The boy gave a small smile a wrapped his own pinkie around hers.

“Deal”

It was small, if she hadn’t been overanalyzing his every move, every sound, in fear of her life, she would’ve missed it. But she didn’t.

“You can speak?”

Everything in her parents’ research pointed to the fact that ghosts were incapable of complex thinking, they were just echoes of a former person after all. Yet here this boy was, spitting in the face of her parents’ years of research.

A small nod was all she got in return.

“Okay,” she was starting to think her vocabulary was slowly diminishing to just the word ‘okay’.

“Alright, I’m going to go upstairs and look for what I need to fix, that,” she gestured to him, “I brought this up here,” she said as she picked up the overlooked food, “It’s not much, and not very healthy, but it’s all I have at the moment and It’ll do. Feel free to munch on it all you want, I should be back in a minute, my parents went out with some old college friends and shouldn’t be back till tomorrow afternoon.”

He simply watched her ramble on in fascination. She didn’t know where these mother-hen instincts were coming from, but she wasn’t complaining. The kid was nothing short of adorable.

“uh- anyways, you probably want this,” she said as she pushed the plate into the cage.

She watched in mirrored fascination as he sniffed the food and began eating it. That didn’t faze her though, what caught her by surprise was that he very clearly knew how to use the chopsticks provided with the meal, especially with one hand fighting to keep himself from spilling onto the basement floor.

Leaving him to finish the meal, she set to finding the supplies in her mental checklist. Once she had what she needed, she made her way down into the lab, making sure to swipe the keys hanging by the entrance to the lab.

She unceremoniously dropped everything in front of the ghost boy, startling him into a flinch. She winced.

“Sorry.” She sent a sheepish smile to the kid who sent his very own.

This is the moment she’d been dreading. There was no way she would be able to stitch him back up and keep him locked in the cage. She would have to defy her parents’ one rule. Never trust a ghost. But her parents had been wrong before. They said ghosts can’t feel pain, yet the ghost boy wined every time he placed accidental pressure on his wounds. They said ghosts can’t form complex thought, and yet he could, enough to speak to her at least. They said ghosts don’t need to eat, that they sustained themselves through ectoplasmic energy, yet here he was eating, using chopsticks.

“Okay, I’m going to let you out, but remember our deal,” she could still go back, she could still take all evidence of tonight, lock herself in her room and pretend this never happened. But as she looked into his green eyes, she couldn’t help but noticed the pale freckles splashed over his cheeks, noticed the way his hair frizzed from the dampness in the air, noticed the way her parents had left her with this supposed monster. The monster that was now attempting to balance one chopstick over the other.

“I trust you, and you trust me.”

With that, she unlocked the cage and instinctively stepped back.

She was expecting teeth and claws like when she first came across him, or maybe a slow crawl towards her, what she hadn’t expected was a pair of pinprick green eyes latched onto her in fear. He was scared of her.

She slowly made her way towards him, exaggerating her movements as to not startle him.

“You think I can carry you out of there? It’ll be easier for me to work out here rather than in there.”

There was a stiff nod before she carefully picked him up bridal style. He couldn’t weigh more than 50 pounds which she had no idea whether or not that was in a healthy range for him. Careful to not further aggravate his injuries, she put him down gently onto a clear area on the floor.

“Alright, I’m not going to lie, this is going to hurt, a lot, do you want me to talk to you while I do this?”

A nod.

“Okay, is there anything you like, or do you just want me to talk random?”

There was a hesitant look on his face before speaking for the second time that night,

“I like space.”

“Oh, well, I don’t know too much about space, but I do know some neat stories I can tell you!”

That’s how she found herself telling story after story of the few constellations she knew while stitching up a ghost kid she met not even 24 hours ago. A couple of stitches in and her hands began shaking, but the boy didn’t seem to mind. He was lost in her words and the worlds she was building for him. She hadn’t even noticed she was done until she went for the next stitch only to find an unmarred surface.

“and in his anger, Poseidon created Scylla to wreak havoc on seas and the seacoast!” she waved her fingers at him.

“Cetus”

“huh?”

“He created Cetus, not Scylla, she’s a six headed monster.” he cheekily pointed out, sticking his tongue out for good measure.

“Okay mister know-it-all,” she cheekily grinned, “I think it’s time to head to bed.”

She quickly checked her phone to confirm it was half-past 4 in the morning and way too late (early?) to be discussing sea monsters.

Pocketing her phone, she looked up to see a terrified look yet again plastered on the ghost’s face.

“Please don’t put me back in there!” he wheezed, “I promise I won’t cause any trouble and you won’t have to see or hear from me ever again!”

“Hey, breathe, remember what I said about trust?”

He seemed to make a point of nodding at a neck-snapping speed.

“Well, right now, I can’t trust my parents, so come one, you’re staying in my room until further notice!”

“...really?”

It would be hard. Sneaking in extra food for him, keeping him quiet, hell, just explaining to her parents how the ghost in their lab escaped from right under her nose, was going to be tough. And her parents weren’t stupid. Neglectful? Yes. Valued their work over their own daughter? Understatement of the year. But it was worth a try for him.

And sure, she had always said she was fine being on her own, she had even declined her parents’ attempts to get her a kitten when she was 12, arguing that she was better off on her own, a lone wolf of sorts. But now, looking into the eyes of a kid, ancients he really was just a kid, who’s seen much more pain than she could ever imagine, having a little brother didn’t seem half bad.

“Yeah little bro, let’s go”

**Author's Note:**

> Not sure if I'll continue this, it's all dependent on whether or not my rat brain latches onto the idea or not.
> 
> Also if you get the reference in the title, hi. Wanna be friends?


End file.
